The move could advance the Obama administration's goal of greater transparency about information in government databases, but it could also anger CEOs and other business leaders President Barack Obama has been actively courting in recent weeks.

Under the program that has been in place for about a decade, the NBAA collects "Block Aircraft Registration Requests," which are forwarded to the web providers and the FAA on a monthly basis. The firms, in turn, suppress the aircraft location and flight plan information for those planes from the data the Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control system releases to authorized providers.

NBAA President Ed Bolen said the Transportation Department is planning to require that aircraft owners meet "security-related eligibility requirements" in order to block data about their aircraft. In other words, if owners cannot prove some specific or unusual danger to their flights or personnel, their flight data would be made public just like that on the vast majority of flights that file flight plans.

"We believe in the Block Aircraft Registration Request (BARR) program because we believe there are many circumstances in which companies have wholly legitimate reasons for wanting to prevent display of flight information," NBAA spokesman Dan Hubbard told POLITICO.

Bolen said the association had already objected to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and was seeking another meeting to try to head off the change, which the group said might take effect as soon as next week. On its website, the NBAA said it had suspended adding new aircraft to the list as of January 17.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman, Sasha Johnson, confirmed Monday that the blocking system is under review, but she would not provide any details. "DOT is evaluating the program," Johnson said. She had no information about any suspension of new enrollments in the program.

"My understanding is DOT is trying to understand the reason people are on this list: is it business reasons, personal reasons, security issues?" said Daniel Baker, CEO of FlightAware. He said he'd heard that some of those on the blocking list were being queried by or at the direction of the FAA about why they signed up. "Some operators received a survey asking how many aircraft you have on here and what's the reason," Baker said.

ProPublica later reported that government agencies, a prominent televangelist and corporations such as AIG and General Motors have all made use of the system that allows them to keep their flights from public view. In addition to security concerns, some companies say that making the data public could reveal sensitive business information about potential acquisitions.

The blocking program involves both agreements between the FAA and data providers and between data providers and the NBAA. Aviation industry officials said it was unclear how the private agreements would change if the FAA adjusts the system. It was also unclear whether or how the NBAA would continue to play a semi-official role in the system if the FAA implements limits that the association has publicly opposed.